The most common way a good hire fails is a bad first two weeks. They arrive motivated, find nothing prepared, spend days guessing, and quietly conclude that being proactive is unwelcome.
Have these ready before day one
- Accounts, tools, and access — all of it, working, before they log in.
- One real task they can finish in the first two days.
- Written context: how the business makes money, who the clients are, what is on fire.
- A named person to ask questions of, and explicit permission to ask a lot of them.
- What "good" looks like at 30, 60, and 90 days.
Document as you train
Do not write the manual first — you will write the wrong one. Instead, have them write it as they learn: every time you explain something, they document it. By week three you have onboarding for the next person, written in the words of someone who just needed it.
Set a real check-in cadence, daily for the first week and weekly after. Frequent short check-ins early feel like more management but produce far less of it later.
Try it
Write the first-week plan today, before you have hired anyone: the access list, the first task, the context doc, and the 30/60/90 definition. Hiring goes better when this exists first.